Thoughts on poverty and homelessness in the U.S.A.

Posts tagged ‘green party’

A city in Florida is making it illegal for homeless people to carry possessions in public places.

My question is, how will they know whether or not a person is homeless? Are they just going to target people who are poorly dressed, assume they are homeless then take away whatever possessions they are carrying with them? If someone is walking home from the grocery store, carrying a bag of groceries and looking poorly dressed, might the police not stop that person and demand he/she give up the groceries? Suppose the police officer is hungry, for example, hasn’t eaten in hours and then this rather homeless-looking person shows up carrying a bag of groceries in a city that doesn’t allow possessions to be displayed on public sidewalks?

Am I trying to be funny here? Just a tongue-in-cheek little anecdote for today’s Mad Bag Lady blog entry?

Look, I know most Americans don’t care at all about the homeless. Whether you’ll admit to it or not, most of you still believe in the “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” nonsense. You think that if you keep supporting the system, keep working hard at tiny wages for bosses who act more like slaveholders than business owners that one day someone will recognize your good “attitude” (slaves are notorious for having good attitudes toward their situation) and promote you to CEO of corrupt corporate America. So you dare not speak out on behalf of the homeless. After all, they’ve just made “bad choices,” obviously. Otherwise, they’d be temporarily embarrassed millionaires too.

Believe me, I get it. I get it.

But remember this: dictators always choose a scapegoat, deprive them of their civil rights first and convince the rest of the population to support it. But the real agenda is to deprive everyone of their rights. It’s just easier to start with the most unpopular people first. The homeless are just guinea pigs for an overall plan to eliminate our public spaces, privatize everything, and take away all of our rights (unless of course we’re wealthy and can afford to buy the streets and sidewalks so that we can do whatever we want on them.)

So Hitler attacked the Jews, for example. But ultimately, no one was free under Nazi leadership. What many people don’t know is that Hitler went after union leaders too. Union leaders, communists and democratic socialists–anyone who wanted more civil liberties for the average person (as opposed to the wealthy elite) was the enemy of Hitler and the Nazis.

This might surprise many Americans who’ve been brainwashed into believing that “socialism” is the enemy. In fact, Hitler was strongly against democratic socialism and communism.

Think about that for a moment. Please. Please think, and think for yourself, if only for a moment. Because it’s important to remember that “communism,” “socialism,” “capitalism,” etc., are all just labels. None of those systems are practiced in their purest forms (at least to my knowledge.) Most countries use ideas from all of these systems and combine them to create their own systems. (More about this will be addressed in a future blog.) The Nazis may often be thought of as socialists and may have claimed to be wanting to help the average German (who was struggling during the Great Depression) but the Nazis persecuted union leaders, democratic socialists and communists, threw them in prison or executed them. What the Nazis said publicly and what they actually did were often two different things, as we now know from history. (Oddly, I had a hard time finding any videos online about this. Most were filled with propaganda about the Nazis. However, I’ve read the history of Nazi Germany, and I urge you to do the same, so that you don’t believe the lies being told by people who assume you won’t take the time to actually read about it for yourself.)

But back to the point. Laws restricting the rights of the homeless to sleep on “public” sidewalks, to ask for money and now to own possessions of any kind affect all of us. Homeless or not, should you decide to “hang out” in public, you may be accosted by the police. And now, in some cities, you can have your possessions taken from you.

Is this what you want, America?

Perhaps I’m an unusual person because I value freedom over everything, including money. (OMG! OMG! You value something over money!) Yes, people. And I’ll even say it again. Freedom, civil liberties, civil rights–are more important to me than money.

I think we’ve all read about wealthy people who’ve been very unhappy in spite of their material wealth. Marilyn Monroe was a classic example. She was beautiful, wealthy and famous but very, very unhappy. She was not free. That’s right, Marilyn Monroe did not have freedom. As a woman, she was oppressed the way all of us females are. She was a mere sex object. And that’s all she was allowed to be. No matter how often she cried out that she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, that she didn’t want to be a “joke,” the business people who managed her career would not allow her to be herself. To be herself and a serious actress would have meant speaking in her own authentic voice, not the child-like, false-innocent ingenue voice that had made her famous. Being herself meant not flirting with every man–perhaps there were some men who irritated her. Perhaps there were times when she didn’t feel sexy, when she didn’t want to wear makeup or do her hair. Perhaps there were times when she thought about civil rights issues and politics herself. (From what I’d read, she’d had democratic-socialist ideas. That’s not surprising as she’d grown up poor.) But a sex object does none of those things. A sex object is pretty, mindless and always eager to please.

So tragic. So sad. Ms. Monroe seemed to have it all. But the one thing she didn’t have was that which is priceless, that one thing money cannot buy: freedom. Should she have dropped everything to pursue her own desires, she would have lost all that money, all her connections. And then what? Happiness, maybe. But money? She could have lost it all. Instead she gave up her life. So ultimately she lost it all anyhow.

Personally, I don’t see the point in that. But then who am I? I don’t have a lot of money myself, so I suppose nothing I say really matters, does it? Believe it or not, I was faced with similar choices to Marilyn’s. In some ways, my childhood was similar, and I too–yes, me, the mad bag lady!–was thought of as rather, shall we say, sexy… I could have slept my way to the top…

But I chose a different route. And look where I am today! Woohoo!

I haven’t committed suicide because I chose to be myself and not be commodified, but I, obviously, paid a financial price.

However, it could have been different if I’d had a large following. What I mean is, if millions of Americans had also chosen freedom –and we can do it now, all of us, we can choose freedom today!–if Americans were to choose freedom then the few of us who value freedom wouldn’t be the outcasts, the dregs of society. We’d be the heroes.

But today’s American heroes are sellouts. They live like Marilyn lived. It’s fun for a while until the years go by and you start to find you can’t be a commodity any longer. If you’re an intelligent person, eventually, you’ll start to realize that there are aspects of yourself you’ve had to suppress in order to appease those you’ve allowed to have power over you.

And increasingly, it’s getting dangerous to hold onto our humanity, to be ourselves. We’re all under surveillance. We go to work and our bosses are watching us via cameras all over the building. They watch us as we drive into the parking lot and park our cars. They see us applying that extra dab of lip gloss and straightening out the wrinkles in our clothes before we exit our car. They’re watching while we think we’re alone in the elevator and pulling the crease out of the back of our skirt when we forget someone else is there (behind the surveillance camera.) Even some public restrooms have surveillance cameras in them. But we ignore all that, telling ourselves no one is really watching us, and we adjust our bra strap, maybe remove our blouse to fix our bra, and all the while a man is watching us behind that camera in the restroom where we thought we were alone.

We have no privacy. No time to be ourselves, even when we’re alone. No time to lock ourselves in the bathroom to have a good cry–because they’re watching us there too. But that’s not enough for them.

Now they want the right to stop us and confiscate our belongings–but only if they think we’re homeless.

Well, guess what, Americans? We are homeless! All of us. They’ve taken our country away from us. We grew up living in the Land of the Free and the Brave, the land that claimed, “Give me your tired and your poor…” but our land was taken away from us.

–It’s knowing you’ll always be poor no matter what you do, that things will never, EVER, get better (at least not for you. Maybe for someone else, but not for you.) Knowing that poverty is forever… You’ll always be poor, no matter how hard you work, no matter how positive your attitude, no matter how well-written your resume, no matter how great your grade-point average in school, the system is set up to make sure that you will fail. And everyone around you is working hard to make sure you fail. Because that’s just how it is.

That’s the tragedy.

(And I’m going to experiment with writing a short…ehem…post here. Is it possible? Even this parenthetical explanation has become too long…)
Okay, here we go…

The tragedy is not being hungry, poor or even homeless. We’ve all had those types of experiences. Haven’t you ever been really, really hungry? Maybe it’s only 9:30 a.m. and your lunch break isn’t until 12:30 p.m. There’s no vending machine in sight, and you didn’t pack a lunch. Your boss is a stickler and won’t let you leave your desk until exactly 12:30 p.m. What to do? Well, you’ll suffer until 12:30. But maybe you’ll get absorbed in your work and forget all about it because, after all, you know you’ll get a chance to eat. You’ll just have to wait a few hours. Sure, it’s uncomfortable, perhaps even painful if you’re super hungry, but in a few short hours you’ll go out and buy a sandwich, sit down to eat and all will be well. In fact, you may even feel like you’re in heaven. The prolonged hunger may give you a better feeling once you do eat.

Being deprived for a short period of time can cause us to feel incredibly grateful for what little we have and can enhance our feelings of well being once our hunger is satisfied. Getting a chance to eat when we’re hungry feels good. But getting a chance to eat after we’ve been ravenously hungry for hours–deprived of but longing for food, our stomach growling like an uncaged grizzly and stabbing us with pangs of hunger–feels absolutely wonderful! Food might seem like a miracle. We may even be tempted to wrap our arms around the chef and give him/her a great big hug and kiss… Whew, I finally get to eat! Thank you for filling my aching stomach!

So the tragedy of poverty is not the experience in and of itself. It’s not so tragic to be hungry, thirsty or even homeless and unloved–as long as it’s temporary and solutions exist. We’ve all experienced deprivation. And sometimes the experience can make us stronger. Sometimes the experience makes us better people, causing us to develop empathy and compassion for those who are less fortunate. Even the wealthy experience poverty on occasion. (Some think they’re loved but are only loved for their money or celebrity status–so the cruel, sick joke is on them. They aren’t loved at all. Some think they’re unloved but are loved by secret admirers too timid or shy to tell them they’re loved. Or perhaps they aren’t open to accepting and valuing the love, so they can’t receive it. The love is there but they’ll never feel it. That is also tragic in its own way. Some people are wealthy financially but are spiritually and emotionally poor.)

But the tragedy of poverty is knowing it’ll never end. And that is what makes poor people crazy. Knowing that you’ll always be poor no matter what you do, that the system is set up to make sure you’ll fail, that because you weren’t born with money, connections, the “right” race or gender, etc., you’ll never succeed.

So let me ask you this.

What would YOU do if you were suffering and knew that it would never end, that it’s permanent, there’s no hope for a better life. You’ll always suffer no matter what you do?

Gone are the days of rebellion, the days of revolt, the days of speaking out, standing up, standing out, standing for something or someone. We no longer watch each other’s backs. And none of us has the courage to stand alone, completely alone. We can only watch as things just happen. Things just pass us by… ’cause that’s the way it is.

Ya’ know, that’s just the way it is, so ya’ll had better just accept it.

Why are you such a rebel? You’re going to have trouble in your life because you’re just too rebellious. (That’s what they told me when I was very young.) Guess what?

They were right. I thought I grew up in a conservative city. Little did I know… Now I live in a conservative country–so conservative that I don’t recognize it anymore, and… Guess what else?

I feel like a foreigner in my own country.

Gone are the days of activism, of activity, of shocking revelations, of refreshing words of wisdom. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is not free at all. In fact, it’s scared to death. And it doesn’t even have a home anymore. It’s homeless. And those of us who belonged to that land, that erstwhile land, are homeless along with it. Where shall we go? What shall we do now?

Yes, those of us who remember the USA, the real USA long before surveillance, before outrageously expensive rent, education and health care, before chronic unemployment and jobs with tiny wages that don’t meet the cost of living, before increasing poverty and homeless, those of us who remember will soon grow old. We’ll be replaced by those who won’t remember, those who find surveillance to be the norm. Heck, they might even enjoy being groped by the TSA. But there was a time, and not so long ago, when there was crime but we didn’t believe in fighting it by violating people’s privacy, keeping each other under constant surveillance, and hiring cops so aggressive that they’re more dangerous than the criminals who used to scare us. And we still had the courage to talk to our neighbors in those days. We also had the time and money to socialize, to go out and have fun. (Do you remember this, people?) We weren’t quite as afraid of each other. And odd, unique, rather strange people were all around us. They dressed differently, walked differently, talked differently, had strange ideas and accents we couldn’t quite place. We didn’t know where they were from but we respected their right to exist. And so, even though they were different, they walked among us (without worries of being tasered or beaten up by militarized police forces who can no longer solve problems nonviolently.)

Not anymore. Today, such characters are taken away. Are they jailed? Forced into homeless shelters? Perhaps there’s another Guantanamo secret prison set up especially for people who are just different from the norm so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with them anymore.

Here now are the days of conformity, complacency, and acquiescence at its finest. Today we say nothing that hasn’t been said before. We say nothing.

We say what’s already been said, say what we’re told, do what we’re told, think what we’re told. Over and over again.

The same songs play over and over again on the radio. Slightly different lyrics but the song remains the same.

The same shows play and replay on the same TV stations–all 1000 of them.

The same movies we’ve already seen show in all the theaters all over town. The same actors, the same directors, writers, announcers. It’s always the same. Different screenplay, same story. And all the characters look the same. They’re all pretty. They’re all thin. They’re all glamorous–even after running a marathon, the leading lady isn’t sweating and her makeup isn’t smudged. No one farts or burps… Well, not usually. Sometimes in comedies, but only to keep the audience from thinking serious thoughts.

Heaven forbid we allow anything new. That might make some of us think. Might form new synapses, change our brain chemistry in ways the pharmaceutical industry never dreamed of.

And we don’t want that.

We censor our own thoughts. We cannot think for ourselves. We dare not even think of thinking for ourselves. What will the boss say if he finds out I voted for the Green Party? What will the wife/husband/crazy neighbor think if they find out I’m a socialist? What if I don’t agree with what everyone else is saying? What if I have a different view?

Americans like to talk about diversity. But “diversity” (along with “family values”) is like the weather in America. Everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it. We “embrace diversity” and we’re so “politically correct” yet we see the same ideas, opinions, TV shows, films, songs, rock bands, movie stars, celebrities, experts, newscasters, etc., over and over again. We see cookie-cutter houses being built–each one the same as the other–because it’s more efficient to build them all the same way.

What if someone built a purple house?

Have you ever walked into an office and seen a diverse crew of employees hailing from different races, age groups and genders? Have you ever worked within a truly diverse work environment?

I HAVEn’t. But I have worked for people who claimed to embrace diversity. (I suppose on some level they did: somewhere inside the deep, dark recesses of what little was left of their imagination, they embraced diversity. Hugged it real tight. Real tight. Then they let it go forever.)

I wonder if I’m the only one who gets bored with it all. In school, my teachers kept repeating the same things over and over again. I suppose some of the other students needed that repetition. Perhaps they hadn’t learned it yet. But I had. And I was bored. Very, very bored. Please, please, teach me something new. But they wouldn’t. They just wanted to repeat the same things over and over again.

Over and over.

Over.

Again.

And if I yawned I was in trouble. If I skipped a class, I was in trouble. A teacher threatened to fail me once because I wasn’t coming to class. “Seriously, why don’t you give me a reason to come to class?” I wanted to say. Sorry to say, I am not so polite anymore. But I wish I could go back to school, a real school where I could actually learn something new. But then maybe my brain would explode from the shock. And since I seem to be the only one who is bored with all this mindless repetition, this endless conformity, this nonsensical drivel that passes for “news” and “entertainment,” I suppose there’s just no point. No point at all. It’s over, folks. Over. (The USA, that is. The rest of the world might survive, but not the USA.) The USA is a goner. Over. Finito. How does one spell “sayonara?”

Over and over.

Over.

Again.

So here’s my drivel for the day. Sorry ’bout the mess. I’ll go grab some tissue and pick up as much of it as I can. Then I’ll be more careful with the next blog entry… and there will be at least one more.